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Driver's Seat
Pinball people
By BOB DRIVER, columnist
Article published on Tuesday, March 4, 2008 |
Remember the old-time pinball machines? You don’t see many of them any more. Fifty or 60 years ago, armed with a pocketful of nickels, you could spend hours sending the steel balls up the chute and into the maze of rubber bumpers, spring-operated holes and pushbutton trigger arms. With skill and luck you could keep the balls bouncing long enough to rack up total points good for a free game, or maybe 10 of them. Most of the machines are long gone.
But pinball people remain, in every metropolis and crossroads of our country. And what, you may ask, are pinball people? They’re men and women whose lifestyles have somehow come to resemble a pinball game – erratic, careening, slammed, bounced, dunked, ricocheting, unpredictable and mostly out of control.
You want to see some pinball people? For openers, visit any courthouse or police station. Or bail bond office, domestic violence hearing or divorce court. Not everyone there is a pinball person, of course. But a certain percentage will be. From one year’s end to the next, the life of a bona fide pinballer is normally a succession of crises, emergencies, sudden moves, uprootings, hairpin turns and abrupt reversals. Pinballers seem to attract excitement. Or generate it. As Anna Roseanna Danna used to say, “It’s always something.”
For most of humankind, life happens to us, more than our happening to life. This is doubly or triply so for pinballers. For 5 percent of the time, a pinballer may run his/her own life. The rest of the time, life is in charge. The pinball person is a willing or unwilling passenger, with some payoffs and high points mixed in with plenty of regrets and bruises.
Pinball people and their rollicking adventures cost themselves, their friends, families and the general public an enormous amount in money, time, effort and mental energy. Pinballers switch jobs and residences 10 times more often than the normal worker. They tend to fall in love (and out) with reckless abandon. They drink more than they should, get DUI arrests, and slug cops much more frequently than non-pinballers. They undergo more surgeries and suffer more serious illnesses. Their names often appear in news stories. Pinball people end up as characters in novels and movies.
Rich folks can be pinballers just as readily as poor folks. In fact, their money helps them do it. When Dull Dan gets a 10 million dollar windfall, he puts it into a trust fund. In contrast, Pete the pinballer will take the money and quickly invest it in a divorce, an overpriced yacht, a copper mine in Zambia, and a silicon-shapely red-head. The worlds of sports and entertainment produce a high number of pinball people. Pinballing need not be a permanent condition. Roger Clemens has been a recent pinballer. Britney Spears is a pinballer queen.
In and of itself, I guess pinballing is neither good nor bad. But I think it must be rather unsettling, as well as tiring. Can a person deliberately choose to become a pinballer? Possibly. But it’s usually a cumulative process, in which without planning it or lifting a finger – the candidate experiences a dozen or more remarkable incidents within a short time. When the dust settles the die has been cast and he/she is a confirmed pinballer.
I don’t have statistics or validated research to back up any of this. But that doesn’t mean it’s not so. Just look around you, or think of the people you’ve known. I’m sure you can name at least one pinball person, whose life is a sustained series of exciting good-and-bad events.
Should we envy the typical pinballer? Gladly exchange places with him or her? So many questions, so few easy answers.
Send Bob Driver an e-mail at tralee71@comcast.net.
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Article published on Tuesday, March 4, 2008
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